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An "artificial state" is a State that is created for a region by external actors without regards to the region's inhabitants desire for a shared national identity. Artificial states are often racked by internal conflict and political instability in addition to being very vulnerable to covert political interference from outside sources. {Link without Title} The term artificial state does not necessary have to refer to a state's present condition (such as an unstable artificial state still racked by internal ethnic divisions) but the denotation can be used in reference to now highly functional state's origins (as is the case when referring to Belgium as an artificial state.) Some oft-mentioned artificial states are:
In some cases, artificial states are created by major regional or world powers to prevent the inhabitants from finding common unity and strength -- thus making the internal divided artificial state easier to influence. Iraq is one of the best examples in that it was crafted from three at-odd ethnicities by the British Empire after the fall of the Ottoman Empire to ensure continued British access to its abundant natural resources. In other cases, artificial states are created by more by happenstance rather than from geopolitical strategizing. This is the origin of many of the post-colonial independent African states such as Congo , and Rwanda and Middle-Eastern states such as Iraq , Historic Palestine and Lebanon . Robert Fisk , a noted journalist and geopolitical critic, notes that the absence of functional democracy in the Middle-East may result from the artificial origins of many of the region's states: "... there's nothing genetic about the Arab world's inability to seize democracy. The problem is not the people. The problem is the environment, the make-up of the patriarchal society and -- most important of all -- the artificial states which we created for them. They do not and cannot produce democracy." ''(emphasis added)'' {Link without Title} Initially, artificial states can lack unifying Patriotism or sense of Nationalism since the inhabitants do not share enough in common. As time passes, nationalism can be nutured through appropriate Propaganda or Education . Often, as in the case of Yugoslavia, it was necessary to suppress the national identities of the component artificial state ethnic groups. SEE ALSO REFERENCES |